Lake Maggiore was awesome. Overall, it was a great weekend – filled with fun and relaxation. Not everything went perfect, but that was often the reason it was so much fun. So here it goes….

Our trip started off early Friday morning at 5:30 am. We met outside Residence Candia (our apartments) and all ten of us walked over to the closest metro stop. For the most part, we all packed lightly, knowing there would be plenty of walking and we would have to carry our bags. For this reason, I left my laptop behind, which was unfortunately quite hard for me to do. Apparently I have become quite attached and dependent on having it with me. So we took the metro to the Termini station, Rome’s biggest train stop. We boarded our train, which turned out to be quite comfortable, and almost immediately 8 of us were asleep. I, however, was unable to fall back asleep, as was Dan, so we passed the time reading. I was reading a book I had picked up at the used bookstore in Fallbrook the day before I left, and it turned out to be a little disappointing, but it passed the time. By the time we had reached Milan (5 hours later), I had finished 250 pages. I also managed a 2 hour nap somewhere in there that left me with a nice kink in my neck.

When we got to Milan we had about 1.5 hours before our next train. We decided to leave the station and find a little restaurant. We wandered a bit, which soon became the theme of the weekend, and eventually found a little pizza restaurant. I ordered a pizza margherita, and then got to finish off the remains of three other pizzas, which left me quite satisfied. Then it was time to get back on the next train, which was only an hour trip north to Arona. I cranked out another 100 pages and unfortunately was just short of finishing. From Arona we had to change trains to get to Stressa, but that was only about a 15 minute trip. By this time it was about 1:30 and we were at our final destination. But here was where the first difficulties began. Initially, we didn’t know which way our hotel was, which had been booked online a couple days before. We walked towards an information booth, and then found a sign for our hotel. We found it pretty quickly and went inside, only to discover that the hotel had not received our reservation and was full. Luckily, they were quite accommodating, especially when we showed our confirmation email, and they found us a place at their sister hotel down the road, which was actually nicer and closer to the lake. We also got three rooms instead of the original two and only had to pay about 10 euro more. So it worked out well. By the time we got in our room it was probably about 2:30. I roomed with Kevin and Brennan, two guys I didn’t know all that well, but now we’re good friends.

At this point we were all quite ready for some gelato. We remedied that situation rather quickly, and then headed down to the “beach”, which was this time made of wood chips. We got in the water, which was chilly but not too bad and swam around for awhile. We even had some relay races, which were dominated by my team. We got out and relaxed in the sun for awhile, and then decided we should do something. Problem was, we really had no idea what there was to do. The only source of information about the lake that we had found was a Lake Maggiore website. It mentioned water skiing, jet skiing, hiking, hang gliding, rock climbing and several other fun activities. While all these things probably did exist somewhere, they were definitely scarce. The town we were in was mostly older tourists not looking for high levels of activity. The hotel wasn’t much help because they weren’t used to catering to people with our wants. The result was a lot of wandering looking for something to do. What was ironic was that of the ten of us, all had wanted to do different things – some wanted to hike, some wanted to do water sports, and others wanted to relax. And we all had packed accordingly. Three of us didn’t bring flip-flops. Three others didn’t bring shoes. This made it quite difficult to make group decisions, especially since the options were limited.

So we wandered. We walked about a mile down the lake on each side of our hotel, which was very enjoyable. It was late afternoon and we were beginning to think about dinner. One possibility was going to Switzerland for dinner. We had made it a goal to get there, and hopefully get a stamp on our passports. This was quickly shot down, as trains or ferries back to Italy didn’t run past six. Another option was to take a boat tour of the islands in the lake. It cost about 10 euro each to go around three of the islands and get off on two of them, which had restaurants. Then we found out that the restaurants were quite expensive, so we were back to square one. After more wandering we found a cool little restaurant up one of the side streets. It’s walls were adorned with souvenirs from around the world, and a picture of the owner with the European Champion’s Cup. We asked him about it and he said he has friends on the AC Milan team and used to play professionally himself 32 years and 32 kilos ago. It was a really fun atmosphere and the food was also quite delicious. I split an appetizer of game cold cuts – deer, goose, duck and boar. They were all interesting and pretty good. Then I had pasta with Sicilian pesto sauce for dinner. It was much different to the pesto I was accustomed to but it was really good. We had a pretty long dinner and enjoyed ourselves just sitting and talking. It was almost 8:45 at this point, which meant that the Euro Cup quarterfinal game was about to begin. Half of us found a bar/café and sat down to watch the game and play cards. The other half went and bought fishing poles and fished in the lake, although they failed miserably and couldn’t catch a single fish. I, needless to say, was with the soccer group, and the game was quite good. It was 0-0 at the end of regulation and then in the last seconds of overtime, Croatia scored. There was about a minute left to play, and we all assumed it was over. We were paying our bill and then we looked up and Turkey scored literally in the last second, which meant it went to penalty kicks. Turkey dominated and ended up winning, after being all but eliminated. They also made an amazing comeback the game before, so they have some crazy kind of luck on their side at the moment. By this point we were all quite tired, so we headed back to the hotel to go to bed.

Four people had decided to go on an all day hike, and they woke up at about 7 to hop on a train and go climb a mountain. They had a great time, and got to go swimming in a glacier lake. I wasn’t feeling quite that intense, and chose to stick with the group that was hoping for water sports. We got up at 9:30, ate breakfast, and then struck out to find some water skiing. We managed to talk on the phone to a place that said they had openings and could take us all, so we walked two miles to get there. However, there must have been some kind of misunderstanding because they were completely booked in the morning and also said their boat can only take three at a time. So we were stuck again. They told us about another place down the road, so we walked to look for it, but never found it. So it was back to the hotel to regroup. We went through about ten options, all of which failed for various reasons, and were beginning to get a little stressed. We were all okay with just relaxing, but we did want to do something and nothing seemed to work. We decided to think over lunch, so we looked for a place to eat. We were successful in this endeavor, and actually found an inexpensive place that offered hamburgers. I think the stress made us miss home, and 5 of the 6 of us gave in and got hamburgers and cokes. The burger wasn’t amazing, but it was the thought that counted. The coke was great though, and it even came with ice, which was a welcome surprise. I think the waiter thought we were crazy when we got so excited about coke with ice. Yeah, we were definitely a little stressed, and this broke the ice so to speak. We decided to go to this adventure park place that had rope courses and rock climbing. We got excited for it and we went back to the hotel to get our shoes. We decided to call to make sure we didn’t need special shoes, and it turns out we did. We needed climbing shoes and they don’t rent them. Apparently everyone in Europe knows this, but we definitely didn’t. So again we were out of luck. Our last idea was to just get on a train to Switzerland and go explore there. We went to the train station and found a train to Brig, just inside Switzerland. We didn’t have anything else to do so we went for it.

After about an hour train ride, we got to Brig. We had small expectations, so when we got off the train we were thrilled when we could see the Alps. They were beautiful and we already deemed our trip a success. So then we decided we needed to do three things: get Swiss army knives, get Swiss cheese, and get Swiss chocolate. As we walked around the town, however, we began to notice that all the stores were closed. Eventually we found out, to our dismay, that all the stores close at four on Saturdays, and it was now four thirty. Another disappointment, but we rolled with the punch. We explored the small town, which could aptly be described as quaint, and eventually stopped for dinner. Oh, by the way, they speak German in Switzerland and use the Swiss Franc as currency. I suspected this was true, but I also thought they might speak Italian, being so close to the border. But not so. Anyways, while wandering we found a cool church and then a really cool car. We took some pictures and then headed back into the main square. We found that they were setting up for a concert, which sounded like something fun to do, so we looked for a restaurant nearby. After several tries looking for a place that accepted euros and served something other than pizza and pasta, we finally found a nice Swiss or German restaurant. I’m not sure, because the menu was in both German and French, and as soon as we found bratwurst we latched on to that. We also ordered some German beer, which was actually the best we’ve had so far. The food was great, and it was a nice atmosphere. After dinner we went back out into the square, where the concert had begun. Again, the language was German, but they were a Swiss rock band that had been fairly famous a while back. They were pretty good and we stayed for about 45 minutes. I think it brought out the whole town – which was probably no more than 2,000 people. It turns out their name is the Haberlis if anyone is interested in listening to their stuff.

So by then it was almost 8, so we had to head back to the train station for the trip back to Italy. It was again an hour and I started reading a book Dan had just finished about influence. It has to do with methods used by salesman to trick and convince us to buy their goods. It’s actually quite interesting and is more of a psychological book. When we got back we met back up with the other group who had a fun day hiking in the mountains. We exchanged stories and then played cards for awhile before calling it a night. Overall, the day had turned out to be very fun and successful, but it was not without its hang-ups. Fortunately, this was our first real experience with such troubles!